Review: Qantas Business Lounge, Brisbane Airport

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After getting off of my trans-pacific flight, and going through the quit awkward security checkpoint, I cleared immigration, checked in for my flight to Melbourne, and re-cleared security, into the domestic terminal.

It’s worth noting that if you’re coming off of an international flight and connecting onto a domestic one, not only will you need to re-clear security, but you’ll also need to take a bus to a separate terminal, which can take some time, based on my experience. I would err on the side of caution and leave extra time to get this done, since when I transferred, it was not only crowded, but also the bus was not on schedule for whatever reason.

After getting past security, I made my way to the Qantas Business lounge, which is open for all Business Class ticketed customers and oneworld Emeralds. The lounge next door, the Qantas Club, is for regular Qantas Club members, and oneworld Sapphires.

Once inside the lounge, I my credentials were verified. The Business section was overly crowded in my opinion, with few available places to actually sit, which was surprising.

WiFi was relatively fast, and I did manage to find a place to sit, after stalking a passenger I thought was packing up to get ready to board his flight.

The impressive thing about the Business lounges here are the food spread – for breakfast, there was a full offerings of fruit, pastries, breads and hot items. Not only that, but a full coffee service was in full swing with a barista making any requested drinks. Even more impressive was the juicer – you could take your pick from some whole fruits in a bucket next door, drop them in the juicer and then juice away. Clearly the domestic US clubs haven’t caught onto this…

Boarding and flight change announcements are done from these lounges, which is actually quite nice in my opinion, though it can be a bit annoying considering the nearly hourly departures to all the major cities in Australia. Still, I appreciated it.

My Take

This was a great facility in my opinion, and perfect for a domestic hop, though they’ve either got to expand, or add more seating (the latter would make it more crowded, though). It’s going to become an issue in future years, especially during the work week, so if you expect to find a seat here, get there early.